Instagram 3.5 update brings photo tagging, minor UI changes

Instagram has released v3.5 of their mobile app for iOS and Android and along with that introduced a new feature to the service. Now, you will be able to tag your friends in your photos and see all the pictures you have been tagged in in your profile.

To tag someone in a photo, click on the ‘Add People’ option after you take a photo. You will them be asked to tap anywhere on the photo you want to tag someone and then type their profile name. You then select the ID and the photo gets tagged. You can not just tag new photos but also existing ones by clicking on the options key in the bottom right of each photo. Of course, you can only tag photos you have clicked.

Photos that have a tag briefly show an icon in the bottom left corner of the screen when you see them. You can then tap once on the photo to see the tags. You can click on the tag to go to the profile of that person.

A new option has been added in the profile view where you can see the photos you have been tagged in by others. These photos are not just visible to you but anyone who can access your profile. If you don’t want someone to see photos you have been tagged in, you have to manually hide them from the list or remove the tag. This is pretty much how things work on Facebook, which is not a surprise considering Facebook now owns Instagram.

Other than this, there are also some other minor changes across the board. Both the iOS and Android version get a slightly reworked UI, with a darker color theme that replaces the earlier light gray theme, new font for the Instagram logo on top, updated notification pop-ups within the app, blue highlights for tabs when you have a pending notification and reworked Settings menu. The Android version also gets grid guides for the viewfinder (something that has been available on the iOS version for a while now) and a new high-quality image processing option for uploaded images.

You can download the app from the link below or upgrade it from within your phone.